Category: Election

(Previously posted by Peter Loge on Medium.com) With the presidential nominating season lurching to a close (more or less-ish) pundit attention is turning to potential running mates. A dominant campaign theme this year is “they are screwing you,” with the “they” being a mix of bankers, political insiders, immigrants, minorities, foreign governments, and political hacks,…

After the New Hampshire primary I wrote about a key difference between the victory speeches of Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders on one hand, and Secretary Hillary Clinton on the other. In their speeches Trump and Sanders used the word “we” a lot, while Clinton relied on the word ‘I’. Trump and Sanders, like their…

Rhetorical scholars are among those least surprised by the success of Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Trump and Sanders are doing what teachers as far back as Aristotle said successful speakers do: Make the audience believe the speaker is one of them. Consider this passage from the Christian scholar Saint Augustine in the fourth century AD:…

Donald Trump continues to do well in the polls because people agree with what he says. This sounds obvious, but a lot of the experts in the political and pundit classes keep wondering the same thing: “How can Trump be popular when he’s so obviously nuts?” Some blame reality television, hyper-partisanship, partisan media, and a…